Question

Ray is a nursing student working on a spreadsheet for class. He keeps getting error messages when entering his data and trying to make formulas work. He turns to his roommate, Jacques, in frustration. Ray knows spreadsheets have a variety of uses in nursing and have been adopted in the delivery of nursing care, so he needs to master them. Jacques proceeds to help Ray with the issue, educating him about spreadsheets in the process (Learning Objective 4).Please cite page reference in text for your answer.
a. What are the common quantitative errors associated with spreadsheets that Jacques should mention to Ray?
b. What cause and methods should Jacques mention Ray could use to manage these errors?

Answer 1

Answer:

1. Creating several tables within the same worksheet or spreadsheet. The computer assumes an erroneous association between these tables. So Ray ought to avoid doing that
2. Merging Cells. This usually creates problems when its time for analysis.
3. Entering multiple data into one cell. For example, stating 1 MB (One Mercedes Benz) and 3 LX (three Lexus cars). If you try summing both cells, you'd realise that it will errors.

Solution:

1. Separate tables into difference worksheets and reference them where necessary. Excel can hold at least 255 worksheets. I doubt that you'd need that much.
2. To check that you don't have any merged cells, first, save a copy of the master file then modify one the copies by highlighting the affected worksheets then use the unmerge function to remove any merged formatting. Thereafter, trace all relevant cells to ensure data consistency.
3. With regard to different kinds of data, ensure you enter them in separate cells. That way Excel will understand better what you are trying to process.

Cheers